Physical attraction is one of those “you know it when we see it” concepts. For instance, when you see that attractive guy standing in the checkout line, it's no surprise that you look twice. You see other women look at him too. What is it about him? Sure, you can say that the man is good-looking, but what does that mean exactly? What makes one person more physically attractive than another? When it comes to determining physical attraction, the answers aren’t always easy.

Physical Attraction is not Random

There are fairly standard rules of attraction across all cultures with only minimal variations. Physical attraction also correlates strongly with sexual attraction, but by no means does it overlap totally. We find, for example, certain physical characteristics of children more attractive than others. This usually has to do with the appearance of health and robustness, the key physical indicators being clear eyes and healthy skin.

Heterosexual men and women recognizing the physical attractiveness of someone of the same sex is also common, but this is just an understanding of what the opposite sex is drawn to. It is an intellectual understanding of physical attraction and not the feeling itself.

What Makes Men Attractive?

The most physically attractive general physique to women is tall with a confident, upright posture, wider at the shoulder than the waist––the classic V-shaped torso—and small buttocks. A high percentage of muscularity adds to attractiveness, but Western men have the mistaken belief that a Schwarzenegger-build is a big turn-on, when actually women prefer a slimmer man. Facial features should be symmetrical with a wide brow and strong jaw. Interestingly, during the fertile period of the menstrual cycle, women are attracted more to traditionally masculine men, while at other times, more feminine men win the day.

It is suggested that this is because it was evolutionarily advantageous to pick potential fathers from the physically stronger rather than the best caregivers. Strong, healthy babies were the first consideration for these early women.

Also, if you were a primitive hunter-gatherer who had to go mammoth hunting in an afternoon, these masculine attributes were associated with survival. Being tall and strong, with narrow hips to make running easier made a man a better bet for a mate with staying power. A balanced face with no unsightly twists suggested that he carried no disfiguring diseases. From a woman’s point of view, it was all about picking someone who would last a little longer than Friday, someone who could protect her and supply enough protein for her and the kids.

Early women were perfectly capable of supplying the nuts and berries, but meat was harder to come by.

The underlying concept still applies, but nowadays a good job and a sense of responsibility can help get you a wife. That does not mean the old parameters for physical and sexual attraction no longer apply, just that they do not necessarily equate with being a good provider. The problem now for women is to find the right balance. That, in a way, has always been the case, and that is why women still have a keen eye for masculine sexual attractiveness regardless of who they say, “I do,” to at the alter.

What Makes Women Attractive?

With men, however, the criterion for female physical attraction hasn’t changed much since earlier times. Underneath every smart suit and designer tie lies an unreconstructed cave dweller who just wants his children to carry on after him. Man's underlying driver is reproduction; there is an innate impetus to pass on genes. The best way to do that is to pick a partner who is young, physically fit, and healthy.

According to David Buss in Evolutionary Psychology, men are attracted to youthful looks because a woman’s reproductive ability declines after twenty. On average and across 37 cultures, younger men preferred their wives to be 2.5 years younger than themselves, with the gap widening as the men grew older.

This preference for youth makes women with features associated with being young such as full lips, lustrous hair, clear smooth skin and a smallish lower jaw, more physically attractive to the average man.

Another important indicator of physical attraction in all cultures is a woman’s body mass index. What is optimal, however, is different from one society to another. Some like them plump and some like them perishing. In Western countries the ideal is slim and slender, but, as an example of a communication lapse between the two sexes, a study by David Buss in The Evolution of Desire found that, when asked to choose the ideal build, women chose skinnier than average as a male preference, and men chose the average build. Super-thin women, it seems, are not what men find most physically attractive.

Another sign of attraction, whether plump or slim seems to be the waist and hip ratio. The waist-to-hip ratio in most cultures including Western is .07 (the waist circumference is 70% of the hip circumference). According to Focused-on-fitness.com, many of the great beauty icons like Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and the Venus de Milo have that ratio, although one suspects that our more contemporary beauties are closer to one-to-one. Slimness can go too far.

It will not have escaped anyone’s notice that many men also prefer women who are shorter than they are. Although there is the suggestion that being smaller equates to being younger, sexual dimorphism of this kind is more likely to reflect the fact that the greater the difference in size between the two sexes, the more likely certain large males will dominate the reproductive stakes.

Huge stags fighting over their harems come to mind. Jarad Diamond in Why is Sex Fun? points out that human males are only about 12 percent larger than females, but it does bring out male-to-male combativeness. What it also does is underline the fact that the underlying goal of physical and sexual attraction is the production of children by the healthiest and fittest of both men and women.

That, however, is not the last word. There is more to human relationships than getting together to have children and keeping the gene pool happy. We may be attracted to someone in the first place because of innate preferences built up thousands and thousands of years ago, but a modern long-term relationship requires something more than physical attraction. It incorporates a heightening of the physical and sexual to a romantic attraction, which in the end is found to be truly based on a genuine liking for the other person. That is the real explanation for lasting human physical attraction.

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